


Stayed in the Darkness with You

by OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove’s shitty coping methods, Blind Character, M/M, Minor Injuries, Nobody Talks About Their Feelings, Pining, i do not intend this as an accurate depiction of blindness, nor should billy’s opinions on being blind be taken as my own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 05:20:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17258306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers/pseuds/OurLadyofPerpetualWallflowers
Summary: Steve thinks it’s nice, to spend the day with Billy’s hands against his ribs, holding in his nightmares. Watching his back. He thinks it would be nice, to have this to come home to every day. A dark room and a soft bed, blond curls and sure hands. Maybe nice isn’t the word for what this feels like. Maybe the word is happy.





	Stayed in the Darkness with You

Billy Hargrove winds up being the best at killing things from the Upside Down.

He seems to have a knack for it, knows instinctively the right moment to swing a crowbar, pull a trigger, to duck and roll and come up punching.

He fights like he’s never done anything else and Steve is mesmerized at the focus in his eyes, the steady tension in his muscles. Billy didnn’t blink at the world that they reveal to him on a hot summer’s night. Just exhaled a stream of steady smoke and nodded sharply, like he’d expected it, like he woke up to monsters and blood and the looming threat of death every day.

In hindsight, letting him meet Kali might have been a bad idea. 

They get on like a house on fire and once the mind flayer is finally defeated, it surprises no one that Billy’s Camaro follows Kali’s van out of town, off to hunt the bad men of the world and make them pay. It’s like the end of a movie.

A part of Steve wishes he could have gone too. That he could have shaken the years of fear and pain and death off his shoes and never looked back. Instead, he does what he once told Nancy he always knew he would. He works for his father, selling things he doesn’t care about to people he doesn’t know. He gets up in the morning and puts on a tie and pretends he doesn’t notice that the world seems a little dimmer every day.

And then Steve gets a call. 

Kali’s voice is curt in the abrupt manner of talking that Jane still carries from years of being treated like a machine. She gives him a place, a date, a time. Tells him to come alone. Tells him it’s about Billy.

Steve leaves at dawn the next day, tie crumpled on the floor of his bedroom, bat in the trunk. 

Kansas City at six am is just like every city at six am: crowded with traffic and too bright sunlight. Steve clutches his burnt gas station coffee and keeps one hand on the horn. He finds the place easy enough, a trailer on the Missouri side with a worn redwood deck. He approaches carefully, raises a hand to knock only for the door to swing open, Kali’s dark gaze meeting his.

“Where is he?”

Billy is in the tiny bedroom, curled on the thin mattress, his back to them as they approach. He’s lost weight and grown out his hair, gold ringlets falling over bony shoulders.

“It was an accident.” Billy shudders at Kali’s voice but doesn’t turn around. She continues. “We were on a mission, we got seperated. He took a hit to the head and-” She gestures at his form.

“What’s wrong with him?” Steve tries to be quiet but as soon as he speaks, Billy draws a deep breath and sits up, turning to face them and raising his face to the light coming from the window. His eyes are still blue, vibrant blue, but they look past Steve now, unfocused and unseeing.

“Oh.”

Kali leaves not long after that, her group waiting for her in the next town over. She spends a long moment kneeling in front of Billy, speaking so softly Steve can’t hear her. Whatever she says, Billy’s jaw clenches, his fists tucked into his sides. Kali touches his forehead with two fingers and stands, gaze somber and full of regret. Steve sees her out the back door, and the sight of her approaching the Camaro is so physically wrong that he has to reach out and grab her shoulder. 

“Don’t-can you let him have it?” Kali frowns and Steve know he’s being ridiculous. A blind man has no use for a car. But the idea of Billy without it is somehow impossible. “You can take mine.”

Kali smiles softly, amused at something Steve can’t see and takes his keys, leaves Billy’s in his hand instead. 

“I’ll be in touch. Take care of him.”

And she’s gone. Steve glances at the bare trailer, eyes catching on the door to the bedroom, and he feels helplessly overwhelmed for a moment before he shakes himself and takes a breath. He can do this. He’s a damn good babysitter.

A year passes. Kali sends money sporadically but Steve had emptied his bank account when he realized he wasn’t going anywhere. Still, they live hand to mouth. Billy never asks him why he’s there, never questions that he was the one Kali called to look after him. He just wordlessly presses his hands to Steve’s back as they pass each other in the narrow hallway and it feels a bit like gratitude. 

He alternates between laying motionless in bed for days on end and tearing through the small space like a storm. The slightest thing can be enough to set him off and more than once Steve catches the edge of a fist, has to dodge a lamp or a book as it’s thrown against the wall for reminding Billy’s that he can’t use them anymore. The corner store where he buys food must think he’s abused with all the injuries he shows up with and the way he brushes off the worried looks they give him. 

But Billy really does never mean to hurt him. He makes Steve tell him every time, hoarsely whisper apologies and tells him how to care for them. The angry rage dies down. The silent spells grow softer. 

He gets up in the middle of the night once, stumbles to the tiny bathroom and takes a leak, washes his hands. He catches sight of his own face reflected in the cracked bathroom mirror and it’s strange, to realize that the image he sees is his own. He looks worn and thin, deep bags under his eyes from nightmares that followed him all the way from Hawkins. He raises a hand and touches the edge of a fading bruise where Billy had thrown a coffee cup after spilling it and burning his own leg. Steve hadn’t ducked in time, had caught a glancing blow to the temple that left him with a nasty headache. Billy had sworn and nearly knocked himself out when he tried to get to Steve, and they both had cuts on their fingers from picking up the broken mug. 

“How’s the head?”

Billy’s voice is a quiet rasp and Steve would have startled if he hadn’t somehow known he was there, some part of him attuned to the other’s steps and breaths and everything well enough to tell he was standing in the dark hallway. 

“It’s fine. I told you, it barely hit me.” Steve shifts over just slightly as Billy crowds into the space with him, one hand brushing against Steve’s side to orient his steps. He stands there a second, and Steve waits, knows what’s coming.

“Show me.” Billy says and his voice is a breath that sends goosebumps raising along the skin of Steve’s bare shoulder. Steve looks in the mirror at Billy’s reflection, at the blue eyes sightlessly staring just past the edge of the frame, at the blonde curls pulled away from his face in a messy, half-assed braid for sleep, at the faint lines from the pillow tracking across his face. 

Steve swallows and reaches back, finds Billy’s hand hanging at his side, brings his fingers up to trace the edge of the bruise.

“It’s here,” He moves Billy’s fingers along the outline of the mark. “It was purple yesterday but it’s green and yellow now.”

“It’s healing then. Be gone in a day or two.” Billy mutters and Steve releases his hand to grip the chipped edge of the counter. They need to clean more often, he notes absently. He doesn’t ask why Billy knows the exact colors bruises turn as they heal, doesn’t question when he learned how to stitch up cuts or feel for a broken bone. 

Billy’s fingers are cool against the tender skin of his hairline, gently following the edge of something he can’t see and then trailing down the side of Steve’s face, catching on the stubble of his cheek, feeling over the knob of his jaw and pressing gently into the soft give of his throat. 

“Sorry.” He whispers and Steve watches his eyes close, watches his head move forward until he’s leaning against the nape of Steve’s neck, body curled into the space behind Steve, hidden from the mirror save for the hand still feeling its way over Steve’s skin.

“It’s okay.” Steve swallows again, feels Billy’s fingers follow the movement.

“It’s not. I’m not.” Billy sighs and his hand falls to catch on Steve’s hip, squeezes there for a minute before he pulls away and slips back down the hall to the pitch black bedroom. Steve feels the lingering pressure on his hip and almost wishes for another bruise.

By the time two years pass, Kali hasn’t been in contact for six months. They’ve slowly settled into life. Steve works nights at the same corner store where he used to worry the clerks while Billy sits on the redwood deck and listens to the radio. They sleep during the day. Steve covers the windows with blankets to block out the sun, making the inside of the space as dark as possible so he can sleep, a cocoon of their own.

Billy tests out the layout of the furniture Steve pulls in off the curbs, learns to move around the world of the trailer like he used to move through a fight, dodging and ducking and coming up easy. He slinks through their trailer like an overgrown cat, running his hands over the edges of the furniture and walls until he has them memorized. Only on the rare occasions Steve convinces him to leave the safety of the metal walls does he falter. He won’t ride in the Camaro, gets fidgety in the passenger seat, fists clenched tightly in his lap and around his temper. So they walk. Billy’s arm looped around Steve’s or his hand wrapped around Steve’s wrist, fingertips against his pulse, tapping back to the beat there. 

Two hours is the longest they stay out, the length of a movie at the local run-down theater. Billy loves the old films they show on Wednesday nights when Steve gets off early, says he can see them in his head just by hearing the sound. Sometimes Steve will close his own eyes in the dark, will try to imagine the world as Billy sees it and presses his shoulder against Billy’s over the armrest just to know that he’s there, that Steve’s not alone in the dark. They wander home past the neon signs of bars and clubs, the flickering lights too bright for Steve’s eyes to look at directly so he watches the colors shift over Billy’s face instead, like watching an eclipse’s reflection. 

Steve reads the movie listings to him by the glow of the streetlight as they sit on the deck one evening, skipping over the new releases and the foreign films, ignoring the ads for things they can’t afford and resolutely ignoring the first hint of autumn in the air. It’ll be cold soon, too cold to walk six blocks to the theater, too cold for Billy to sit out on the deck with the radio all night waiting for him, and Steve will leave early after dinner to let the Camaro warm up, will get home late in the morning after pulling double shifts to cover the rush of college kids new in town and too poor to shop anywhere else. This is their last movie of the year, he knows, and he’s determined to pick a good one.

“High Noon, 11 o’clock.”

“Hmm. Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, 84 minutes. Maybe.” Billy fiddles with the tuner on the radio, tries to clear up the static cutting through the recap of the Chiefs game. He’s wearing a baseball cap Steve got him with the Chevrolet logo on it and a t-shirt for a bar next to the corner store that Steve sometimes unloads cases of beer for in exchange for greasy burgers and cold fries. 

“Bringing Up Baby, 11:45? Sounds like a girl movie.” The radio screeches as Billy’s hand jerks and he slaps the switch to turn it off.

“Fuck, that’s a fucking classic, Harrington. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, a leopard, Connecticut...hour and a half and worth every minute.”

“So that one then?” Steve folds up the paper and grins because he knows Billy can’t see it.

“Yes, hell yes. You’re gonna love this one, just wait.” 

Two hours later they’re carefully picking their way up the steps, Steve fighting with the lock when Billy leans in, smell of popcorn clinging to his clothes, and whispers “I was born on the side of a hill.” and the echo of Steve’s laughter fills the air around them as they fall through the door.

They both have nightmares more than they care to admit. After yet another countless time when his screams bring Billy stumbling out to the couch, they start sleeping in the bed back to back. At some point they begin finding themselves in each other’s arms. It’s one of many things they don’t talk about. 

But Steve thinks it’s nice, to spend the day with Billy’s hands against his ribs, holding in his nightmares. Watching his back. He thinks it would be nice, to have this to come home to every day. A dark room and a soft bed, blond curls and sure hands. Maybe nice isn’t the word for what this feels like. Maybe the word is happy. 

And then they get a postcard. Kali’s careful code telling them that the upside down has broken through again. Billy sucks in a breath as Steve’s voice trails off. He reaches for the thin cardboard and runs his fingers over the corners, presses it flat between his palms as if in prayer.

“You should go.”

Steve is shaking his head before he can stop himself, heart pounding at the idea of leaving the dark trailer, the twilight city, Billy.

“They need you.” Billy presses on, sight not needed to know Steve’s response. “You can help. Steve, you can help.”

And there lies the secret heart of the past two years. The one thing they tiptoe around like a bomb ready to blow. Steve can help Kali just as much as he hasn’t been able to help Billy.

And he’s tried. Every Sunday when he goes in late, he takes the Camaro to the heart of the city, to the imposing columns of the public library. Every Sunday Steve reads his way through medical texts and professional journals, combs through them with a dictionary by his side to look up phrases like ‘ocular trauma’ and ‘neurological pathways’ in hopes of finding something that will bring back the heat of Billy’s gaze. And every Sunday he returns, empty handed and tired, and Billy pulls him out to the redwood deck, to sit under the stars and listen to the AM static and feel the reassuring thump of Billy’s heart behind his back as they huddle together.

He throws clothes into a bag with shaking hands, tries to ignore the feeling of wrongness thrumming under his skin as he gets behind the wheel. Billy is standing at the door, sightless eyes nevertheless aimed in Steve’s direction and the faintest rays of morning sun are just peeking over the roof of the trailer next door, lining his beloved face with gold and copper curls, highlighting the pale skin it used to kiss, hurting his eyes with its unfamiliar light. 

And Steve has a moment. A split-second of time where he stands at a fork in the road. He’s felt it before: in his bedroom looking at Nancy, outside the Byers looking at flashing lights, in a field looking at the kids going into the tunnels, and now here, looking at Billy Hargrove, looking at his whole world standing barefoot on a redwood deck.

“Come with me.”

Billy flinches back from Steve’s nearness, not hearing him come back up the steps and Steve’s hands rest on his hips easily, like they’re passing in the narrow hallway, giving him a reference and a support all at once.

“I can’t-I need you.” His voice is weak, pleading for something he doesn’t know how to ask for, and he ducks his head to lean in close, smelling cigarettes and coffee and Billy.

“I can’t fight.” Billy whispers, raw and bitter. “I’m useless, Harrington, just get out of here.”

“No.” Steve pulls him closer, pulls him into the shadow of the trailer and presses his forehead against his, closes his eyes like he does at the movies. “I need you. Not to fight…” 

Steve hesitates. This is his own secret, his own little bomb to tiptoe around, wrapped in the feel of Billy’s skin and the sound of his heartbeat and the polaroid he has taped up by his register at work. This is all the times Steve lets himself look, knowing Billy will never catch him, all the too-hot showers at 6 AM, fist in his mouth and around his dick. 

This is neon colors on Billy’s skin and Steve’s hands learning to braid his hair. It’s coffee with dinner and the radio at 4 in the morning. It’s all the times he ever wanted to stay in the dark cocoon of night with a boy with eyes like the noonday sky. 

“I need you. For everything.”

Billy draws a breath and Steve can feel the way his chest expands under his fingertips. And then he lets it out slowly, leaning into Steve like a fist finally unclenched, a faint chuckle rumbling against Steve’s hands as he brushes the tip of his nose against Steve’s.

“Okay, pretty boy.” His voice is rough, his smile watery, and he looks so different in the weak winter sun, so much like the boy Steve met at a party years ago, and maybe it’s how close they’re standing, the way their faces are inches apart, but something has Billy’s eyes meeting his, sight or not. “Okay.”

They pull out of Kansas City at 6am, bags in the back and the bat in the trunk. Steve turns the music up until he can feel it against his back like a heartbeat. In the seat next to him, Billy fidgets, restless until Steve reaches out and grabs his hand, tangles their fingers around the gearshift. Steve points the headlights west and they speed into the receding dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this way too long ago as a playlist promt based on Cosmic Love by Florence and The Machine and I finally decided to quit fussing with it. 
> 
> Also me attempting to merge dialogue and my weird introspective style into decent prose. I’m probably failing.
> 
> Happy 2019, babes. I love you all so much I posted this on my phone.


End file.
